Andy Halliday is hopeful some harsh words inside the dressing room have helped sparked Hearts’ season back into life.

The Tynecastle side are well clear of the chasing pack in the race for third place in the cinch Premiership but they came under fire from supporters after suffering three straight league defeats last month, including against bottom two Dundee and St Johnstone.

Hearts returned to winning ways when they defeated St Mirren 2-0 on Saturday and Halliday is hopeful that all the negativity is behind them and that they can enjoy a strong finish to the campaign.

“I’m probably one of the fortunate ones because I’m not on social media when there is that backlash,” the versatile 30-year-old said of the recent criticism.

“But to me if you’re at a big club with big expectations, you don’t deserve to be at a big club if you can’t handle that.

“I’ve never been one to listen to outside noise. Whatever people’s opinions are of you, it’s more important what the people inside this building think of you. As players we’re very good at managing that here.

“Over the last few weeks, we’ve had criticism, and rightly so, but trust me, we’re criticising ourselves every day in meetings and we know where we need to be better.

“There was a Hearts documentary released a couple of years ago; if there was a documentary in the Hearts dressing room over the last couple of weeks, it would be an interesting watch!

“Any time we’ve had a disappointing result this season, we’ve usually bounced straight back so that’s why our recent wee blip was so disappointing because we allowed it to fester for a few weeks and had some really poor performances and poor results.

“I thought we put that to bed at the weekend when we looked close to our best against a good St Mirren side. We’ve been on unbeaten runs before and hopefully this is the start of another one.”

Halliday this week signed a two-year contract extension, keeping him at Tynecastle until 2024.

“I see this as a club with big ambition and that matches me as a player,” he said ahead of Wednesday’s league match at home to Aberdeen. “I want to compete at the top end of the table and I think we’ve showed everyone the improvements we’ve made on the pitch this year.

“I still think we’ve got gears to go so it’s exciting to be a part of that for the next couple of years.

“We’re trying to maintain our league position, and with that comes Europe next season which is really exciting. I’d love to experience that with Hearts and we want to go deep in the cup competitions.

“One thing I really don’t want to look back on at the end of my career is not having won any major trophies. I believe with the squad we have at the moment, we can do that.”